PSY403 Short Notes by Iqra

Cut it Short by iqra

Lesson 01

What is Social Psychology?

Social psychology is a discipline that uses scientific methods in “an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others” (Gordon Allport, 1985, p. 3).

Main Elements of Definitions

Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors of individual Influence of other people How these influences will be studied? It will be done by the use of Scientific Method. The definitions suggest a cause and effect equation – people influencing individual’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Main Questions of Interest in Social Psychology

The main questions/ topics of interest in social psychology are as given below: Thinking about the self and others Evaluating persons and relationships Interacting with others

1st Question: Thinking about the self & others

Each question of interest can be further divided into different categories. For example, different questions can be asked under this first question of interest. The following 4 questions seem diverse but they refer to the thought process. Social cognition: Researchers who are working on social cognition can ask the following question in their investigation: “How do jury decide guilt or innocence” Person perception: People working on person perception can be curious to know: “How do we know when someone is lying or telling truth” Attribution: It refers to thought process that occur when we decide what caused another person’s behavior The self: We ask specific questions about ourselves, for example one may be inquisitive that “when does a thin body image promotes eating disorders”

2nd Question: Evaluating people & relationships

The following 5 questions also seem diverse but they all involve people’s feelings. Attitude is the most basic type of field - about feeling in general. Attitude: feelings lie at the core of + and neg. attitudes; how feelings, thoughts and behavior relate to each other: why people feel one way and yet behave in exactly the opposite way Attitude change: This question of social psychology is concerned with when and why people alter their attitude over time. For example, “how can we instill positive attitude in children toward school”. Prejudice: People interested in research on prejudice, etc. may also be interested in investigating that “how can society reduce stereotyping and discrimination” Interpersonal attractions: These issues may question, “why do people desire to make friends with one and not the others”, or “why people feel romantic attraction for one and not for other person”.

• Close relationships: Researchers working in this area may be inquisitive that “how our feelings toward significant others change over time”, for example, how happy marriages end into bitter divorces.

3rd Question: Interacting with Others

Human beings interact through many different behaviours, some of them are given below:

• �Social Influence: studies how one person’s behaviour/ presence influences another person’s behaviour.
• �Helping: “How can we convince more people to help disabled”
• �Aggression: “Does media violence promotes violence in real life” why people assault, hit, and kill each other
• �Interpersonal Power: why ordinary citizens sometime engage in torture, ethnic cleansing, or genocide
• �Groups: “Why can’t one religious group agree with the other”... whether people behave differently while in group.

How Others’ Presence Affect an individual?

• Actual Presence of people affecting the individual:

First take an example, how might the actual presence of others influence one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Response of cricket players may become different when fans of some opposing team shout and make loud noises to divert attention of the players. Similarly, your behaviour will be changed if you notice that someone is watching you.

• Imagined Presence of people affecting the individual:

Regarding how the imagined presence of others might influence thoughts, feelings, and behavior, think about past incidents when you were considering doing something that ran counter to your parents’ wishes. Although they may not have been actually present, but their imagined presence influence your behavior

Implied Presence of people affecting the individual:

Finally, how the implied presence of others influences an individual? If you have an experience of driving on the motorway, you would have noticed that signs of specific speed limit make you conscious. Similarly, in shopping stores sometime posters indicate that “You are being watched” ... All of this makes you self-ware and brings a change in your behavior. Other Factors affecting the individual Social psychologists also believe that it is not only the presence of other people that influences a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour, but some other factors are also contributing to that. In this reference, three kinds of explanations of social behaviour can be presented. the factors that a social scientist might use to explain human behaviour.

• �Broad group level explanations, i.e., evolutionary and cultural factors
• �Individual-level explanations: such as childhood experiences, and family history
• �Mediating variables: internal factors such as personality traits, and attitudes.

1. Broad Group-level Explanations: Evolutionary and Cultural Factors

Animals show different pattern of aggression than human beings, These are biological based. e.g., organized warfare seems to be a uniquely human activity. Similarly, people living in different countries demonstrate differences in exhibition of aggression. Evolutionary factors indicate that people living at particular places/ locations have evolved with a tendency to become more or less aggressive to outsiders than to their own kind? For example, tension and resulting aggression in Yugoslavia and other countries like Israel and Palestine could be due to evolutionary and cultural factors both. To explain cultural differences in aggressive behaviour, Margaret Mead (1935) reported that some societies are peaceful (e.g., Arapesh of New Guinea) while others, although living in the same geographical region) are dominating and aggressive (e.g., Mundugumor of new Guinea) Differences have also been reported in world-wide Violence rates, for example, in 1980s, violence rates of 8.5%/100,1000 were reported in the USA as compared to 1.9% in Canada, and

1. 6% in the UK. These different statistics indicate effects of culture and evolutionary factors on social

behaviour.

2. Individual-level Explanations

�Heredity & physiology: Genetic and biological factors also influence human social behaviour. For example, males have been found more aggressive than women due to a male hormone testosterone (Eagly & Steffan, 1986). Morevover, men with higher levels of testosterone have been reported as more aggressive than those with lower levels (Dabbs & Morris, 1990). �Past experiences: Early learning and child rearing practices also contribute to differences in people’s social behaviour. For example, girls are taught not to be aggressive by their parents from their childhood. Moreover, expression of anger is not appreciated in girls and women. This gender difference is also very pronounced in some cultures, so culture also plays a dominant role in these associations. This also suggests that these group or individual level explanations are not mutually exclusive; they all seem to interact with each other. Another example can be how aggression would have been created and shaped in Kashmiris and Palestinians by the teachings of their parents in the process of growing up.

3. Mediating Variables

Mediating variables create a link between situational, cultural, and individual level explanations. These are related with the person concerned and cannot be directly observed, so they must be inferred from a person’s behavior. The effect of mediating variables indicate that for understanding a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour, one must slip inside the skin of the individual. The following refer to different mediating variables: Beliefs: compromise the cognitive information. Attitudes are evaluative responses. Schemas: a kind of mental model that people hold Emotions: transient states of arousal that direct our behavior Personality traits are stable dispositions influencing broad domains of behavior